Drama on the high seas: Erstwhile adventurer recalls Atlantic hurricane - in a sailboat

So many nights after the voyage, Hal Weidner would wake up, awash in the sound of the waves - so loud it seemed as if he were standing next to Niagara Falls or a passing train.

Alan Warren | The Ann Arbor NewsHal Weidner wears the original rain slicker he was wearing on the day in 1958 when he was caught in the middle of Hurricane Cleo on a 32-foot boat in the Atlantic.

The mountainous water would crash down with a roar, followed by the tremendous hiss of bubbling, churning salt water in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.

"That was the most terrifying thing for me," Weidner says, recalling the waves that battered him and another young sailor after they tied themselves to their sailboat in a storm - an open-sea adventure that nearly killed them 50 years ago this month.

As yet another hurricane season hits with a vengeance in the Gulf of Mexico this year, Weidner has his own hurricane survival story, a tale of two young sailors setting out from New York for Europe and getting caught in Hurricane Cleo in August 1958.

The storm had punched its way north up the middle of the Atlantic, so severe that ships on each side of the storm turned back to let it pass.

But "So Long," the 32-foot ketch piloted by two young men in their 20s, sat dead in Cleo's path - 1,500 miles from New York City and 1,500 miles from England. She didn't have a chance of avoiding the winds, so the only option for the sailors was to try to survive.

As Weidner, 72, tells his tale today from the comfort of his home just north of Ann Arbor, the experience and brush with death remains vivid.

"So Long," the 32-foot ketch that nearly sank in the Atlantic - with Hal Weidner aboard - under assault by Hurricane Cleo in August 1958.

"It totally changed my life," Weidner said. "For four hours, I was sure I was going to die."

Weidner grew to love sailboats and racing while a student at Columbia in New York in the 1950s. He crewed on larger boats and yachts and worked at the Northport Yacht Club at Long Island.

There he met Egil Ruud, a young Norwegian who'd tried in vain to sell "So Long," but now needed to return it to Norway.

Did Weidner want to go along as mate for the voyage across the Atlantic? Weidner, who had dreamed of doing some ocean sailing, said yes. He was 22.

They left Long Island Sound on Aug. 1 and sailed down the East River toward open water when the first problems arose.

The Norwegian-built diesel engine threw a rod and could not be rebuilt. Then their communications radio was pronounced dead by a knowledgeable radio man from a nearby destroyer.

The two young men were unfazed. They figured no rescue would come from a radio call at sea anyway, and they liked the idea of sailing the ocean the old-fashioned way - with no power.

The boat took off quickly, making 100 miles a day initially out of New York. By Aug. 15, they had reached the midpoint of their journey and gale winds were starting to rip at the boat.

It was exhilarating at first, with five or six days of unremitting winds - the product of a previous storm - helping push them through the Gulf Stream.

But the two men began to see signs of a hurricane. The winds increased and the ground swells grew. The pair drew confidence from their ship, which they called a floating tank. "So Long" had been a North Sea cutter that took pilots to their boats, and her 6-by-8-inch oak beams resisted the ice.

Such sturdiness would soon face the ultimate test.

As the winds continued to blow, the men became used to sailing with shortened sails, and both decided to stay on deck at night.

As Weidner describes it, the off-man would tie himself to the back mast, to avoid getting knocked off the boat, and would try to sleep until a wave would roll aboard and slap him in the face.

Hurricane Cleo came at midnight on Aug. 17. The rigging began to shriek and the waves grew, resembling those Weidner later would observe with high empathy in the movie "Perfect Storm."

They tried to run into the wind as a strategy, but the waves were breaking too heavily, curling over the boat. After just 10 minutes into the heavy wind, the boat's dinghy got caught on the mast.

The duo turned around and headed downwind as the boat rocketed to 10 to 15 knots, an absurd speed for such a vessel. Towering waves would curl over and dump a ton of water on the two men. "It was like a punch-drunk fighter trying to stay in a fight," Weidner says.

Several times, the boat pitchpoled - a wave sending the boat forward in a head-over-heels manner. The second time, the mast came off.

It was terrifying, yet dazzling. The valleys between the waves were so deep, you would have this "wonderful silence," Weidner recalled.

"Everything got turned off except the lightning and the rain," he said.

For nearly five hours, they endured the brunt of the storm. They pumped water like demons. Daylight came. The planks in the bottom began to loosen and water seeped in.

Soon "So Long" was more than half full of water, but neither man wanted to talk about their probable fate. "Such a conversation seemed irrelevant and impolite," Weidner said. They were exhausted and sick from drinking salt water.

The wind finally dropped off to a breeze the next day, but the slop of the waves continued to bounce the men around on their boat, which now felt more like a floating platform.

That night, they saw the lights of a cargo ship passing to the south. They figured that the ship was taking such a northerly course to make up lost time after initially running away from the storm. Maybe there would be more ships, they thought.

Weidner describes the next day as "mockingly beautiful" - the sea was nearly flat and a warm sun allowed the men to take off their boots and wiggle their toes in the sunshine.

That afternoon, Weidner looked behind the boat and saw what appeared to be a city block of white houses heading their way. He closed his eyes, wondering if it was another hallucination, but Egil's yell confirmed that it was a passing ship.

They had a plan for such a moment. Weidner ripped a mirrored door off a cabinet and began to signal an SOS. The men also filled a sea boot with lamp oil and set it afire, the dark smoke filling the air. The ship passed and they cursed its neglect, but it soon turned and pulled alongside.

It was the Pacific Conqueror, a huge Greek cargo ship. It drifted alongside and its crew members pulled the "So Long" sailors on deck. The crew sat Weidner and Ruud on deck and, without saying a word, put a Heineken beer in their hands.

"Oh, man, that was good," Weidner recalled.

As they were being rescued, "So Long" finally went under the Atlantic waves for good.

The Pacific Conqueror dropped him off in Amsterdam, where he met a welcoming U.S. Embassy official who put him up in a nice hotel and gave him $100 in pocket money. Weidner says he "lived like a celebrity" for a few days, traveling to Belgium and Paris before flying home from London with a plane ticket he had secured before the sailing trip.

Weidner says he and Ruud never saw each other or spoke again after their voyage, so traumatic was the experience. Weidner likens those hours amid the hurricane to an assault from a trusted dance partner who suddenly goes kicking and screaming.
First there's the wind carrying you seamlessly across the ocean for essentially nothing, and then comes the ocean's big rebellion.

They felt as if the sea were stalking them during those early gales. At first, it was fun, but after 24 hours they began cursing the sea. "If you survive that kind of assault, you feel deeply betrayed," Weidner says.

Weidner laid off sailing for awhile after the storm. He says the ordeal made him
appreciate the simple things, such as the fact that he can breathe and that things aren't moving under his feet.

After graduating from Columbia, Weidner served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War.

He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he first taught writing. He went on to teach writing and literature for 36 years at Washtenaw Community College, where he became a faculty fixture.

He eventually returned to sailing, joining the U-M Sailing Club for several years. He bought a plot of land in 1975 in British Columbia, where he got into boats "big time" until the early 1980s. He also kept his passion for the water alive by working several years for the Federal Bureau of Commercial Fisheries on the Great Lakes. During some summers, Weidner worked on fishing boats and tugs in the Pacific northwest.
Weidner lives in Northfield Township with his two teenage children, a daughter and a son, and says he enjoys being an older parent. He retired from WCC in 2000.

His only mementos from his sail through a hurricane are the yellow raincoat he wore and a few photos that he had taken as the boat left New York; he had put that film in a mailer and tossed it to a passing tugboat as they were heading out to sea. He says he took "tons" of pictures later during the voyage, but they were all lost in the storm.